In this article, I critique a federal district court’s ruling that a first-grader has no First Amendment rights after she was disciplined for giving a classmate a drawing referencing “Black Lives Matter.” The court dismissed the claim as a “schoolyard dispute” and deemed elementary school an inappropriate setting for constitutional protections. I argue there’s no age at which free speech rights suddenly begin, and that under Tinker v. Des Moines students do not “shed” their speech rights at the schoolhouse gate. The decision’s deference to school administrators risks giving public schools unchecked power to censor student expression without meaningful judicial review, undermining core First Amendment principles.
